The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1887-05-20
WHOLE NO. 932.
= says: --.e arr OF war is a calculation

--At
of chances
"fn warliSe Europe, save in England a different
system prevails. The war powers have been a
Thousand years in perfectng the private Pro-
motion from the ranks is kept open under the be-
lief that actual service is better school to grad
uate in than any academy While government
will undertake to make private the creation of
the officer is left to the wisdom of God The Al
mighty is no respecter of rank, and genius crops
out in the most unexpected places, The great
Napoleon claimed for his armies an irresistible
morale, because, he said, every soldier felt that
he carried the baton of marshal In his knap-
sack We exhaust our military genius in the sup
posed creation of an officer. When that is done
we point to the proud creature and say: Behold
our army! We have in ninety nine out of a hun
dred cases graduated an incompetent. He is the
natural result of a dull plodding nature and a
good memory, and in this our little military insti-
tuition does not differ from all other schools e,.d
academies the world over.
"The process might be more of a success but for
the fatal defect. lying at the foundation of being
built on the English system, that has an afisto-
crat for an officer and servant-to use the mild
est term-for private. As we have no born aris-
tocrats the school undertakes to create them OF
two boys taken from, the same family one may
be trained at West Point into superior being and
the other made his dog.
This feature alone would have been fatal to
the late war, but for the patronage it affords the
congressman, and We know how dear is official
patronage to the ordinary Solon What we
need to popularize West Point is q law requiring
graduate to serve one year as corporal one
year as a sergeant, and then, seasoned soldier,
he should be subject to a competitive examina-
tlon before being commissioned"
Col. Piatt's sketch of Abraham Lincoln
brings that eminent figure of national history
fho
gerated popular praise has placed him, and
makes him mortal with ourselves, but
mortal Of such splendid intellectual
and moral strength that we admire him
far more than when he was matie to appear
as god. Piatt pronounces him the gran,iest
figure looming up in our history as u nation.
Edwin M. Stanton, the great war secretary,
Is depicted as a man whose Imagination was
even the larger and most potent quality Of
his mind, and lived in world so tincturel by
it that his thoughts and acts were mysterious
to the commonplace, matter of fact minds
about him.
Generous, genial and lnpulsive in youth, in
making his fight with the world the sei,si
tive. imaginative man passed to the steril
vindictive and often brutal "organizer of
victory" even as the sweetest wine makes
soufest vinegar.
From the charges of injustice Col Piatt
does not attempt to vindicate the great war
secretary. He believes that Stanton earnestly
desired to do his duty to the government, but
that he was, without exception, more subject
to personal likes and dislikes and more vim
dictive i'll the qualification of his hatreds, than
any man ever called to public station Mr.,
I.att saws of this popularity of Stanton:
l.,t h
force of character saved him and his cause from
utter wreck in this direction. Not only So but it
seemed to ne that both Stanton and Seward were
drunk with the lust of power. They fairly rioted
in its enjoyment. While Lincoln and Chase were
as pure and simple in this as children, with no
such morbid desire to crafty, with no personal
friends to favor and no enemies to punish STAN
ton and Seward not only reveled IN deslotic
authority, but Stanton used the fearful power of
the government to crush those he hated while he
sought, through the same means, to elevate those
he loved. '.=.. .. e
In mitigation of all this, Col Piatt tells us
that the heart of the war seer. .ta.v always
beat kindly when reached by suffering, and
was ever open to the common soldier He
says, too, that Stanton's was the Muster mind
of the war.
The chapter on Salmon P Chase is of pe-
culiar interest, describing as it does some of
the financial history of the war, the birth Of
the greenback. and contains some reflections
on capital of peculiarly Piattian or,ler. No
writer of our day has more decidedly the
quality we call "style" than Col Piatt. He
may be extremely rash in his asserti ns some
times, but lie is always interesting The fac
ulty of /. II ing the pathetic with the inrisive,
the droii wth the forcible, is pre- enifielltly
his OF Salmon P. Chase as secretary of the
treasury he says: He proved an eminent
secretary on the fact see demonstrated every
day, and that fact is that man is the most
successful i'm business which he knows the
least about" He regrets that Mr.. Chase was
ever calIei to other duty than that which he
last adorned, as he had to an eminent degree
the judicial mind and temperament
The chapter on William H. Seward is in
tensely interesting 1t contains many anec-
dotes which reveal this distinguished states
man as well as others in a new light. Mr..
Piatt says: #y -s
8 have no thought of asserting that William H.
Seward was at all bad man. With no turn for
women and no taste for wine, he neither ga,nbed
nor stole. He affected wickedness he did not
feel, because such affectaton was. in his estin,a-
tion, good form in statesman .z
In the heart of New York bronze statue of
heroic size has been erected to the memory of
New Yorks greatest statesman. 1t will darken
into slow decay, as his memory fades into obliv-
ion, without. probably, one of the busy millions
knowing that for four years nothing stool be-
tween that great commercial center and the utter
ruin of a boinbardment but the subtle intellect
and patriotic heart of that one man., Without G
navy possessed of no coast defense, our cities on
the sea were at the mercy Of the weakest naval
power of Europe.
Col. Piatt's book has excited the critics.
They do not approve of much that he has
said and they are particularly indignant over
what he has not said. This proves that it
will have MANY readers t- c.. G.